College Wrestling: Augustana hands Northern 34-4 setback

April 03, 2007|By Dave Vilhauer, American News Sports Writer

The scoreboard revealed a lopsided wrestling victory for Augustana. The mat showed a spirited effort by Northern State. Augustana won all the close matches to fuel a 34-4 non-conference victory at Wachs Arena Friday night. Of the seven contested matches that the Vikings won, two were by a single point, one was by two points and another was by three points. "The dual score doesn't show how hard our guys wrestled and the effort they put forth," said Northern coach Pat Timm. "I'm not happy with losing 34-4 but I can tell you this, I'm happy that we're stepping in the right direction." The Vikings always seemed to have a slight cushion to work with in each of their narrow wins. Augustana wrestlers would grab a quick lead and build up riding time. In one instance that riding time provided the final margin of victory. "It's important to get that time on top and build a little bit of a lead," said Augustana coach Jason Reitmeier. "But we want to keep building leads in the third period and we weren't finishing matches exactly the way I want. That's the killer instinct and right now some of our guys are missing that." The Wolves scored their lone victory at 157 pounds when Phillip Downs racked up an 18-6 victory. The freshman from Madison exploded for 13 first-period points. "I went out there and kind of got an early lead and helped seal the deal," Downs said. "I just went out there and got after it and things fell my way." Despite the lopsided score, there were a few interesting moments in the match. "I got myself in trouble," Downs said. "I think I needed to hook up some things a little bit tighter." While Timm said that Downs needs to slow down and look to finish his match, he praised his wrestler for being aggressive. "Downs did a great job," Timm said. "He went out and got after it and got a win. That's the big thing." The Vikings improved to 8-4 with the victory and showed they can win the close ones. "I'm happy with the way we performed," Reitmeier said. "We pushed the pace, we got in their face and we went hard." The Wolves slipped to 2-10-1 on the season, but Timm spotted some positives against Augustana. Northern will try to build on those positives with three more home duals in the next two weeks, the first of which is against Concordia, Moorhead at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Wachs Arena. "The next three duals are winnable duals," Timm said. "If we wrestle like we did tonight and maybe improve on some areas, I really feel that we have a shot a winning all three duals." 125, Chris Trampe, A, won by forfeit; 133, Adam Schlee, A, def. Corbin Surat, 6-3; 141, Mike Long, A, def. Dave Schiley, 6-5; 149, Brandon Krueger, A, def. Dustin Bonn, 9-4; 157, Phillip Downs, NSU, def. Jarred McCarthy, 18-6; 165, Aaron Haddorff, A, def. Brunau Agustine, 9-5; 174, Cody Henriksen, A, won by forfeit; 184, Beau Severtson, A, def. Cale Cornemann, 5-4; 197, Nate Buys, A, def. Todd Naasz, 10-0; Hwt., Ray O'Connor, A, def. Jared Little, 3-1. Official: Toby Bryant.